Fourth Grade

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What I missed the day I was absent from fourth grade:

Playing hopscotch: throwing the keychain into a square, hopping one-legged, swooping down to pick it up, the two-squared hop, then back on one leg: chalk lines blurring as many feet make the perilous passage

Skipping, so hard to master, especially the long line held at each end by one of the girls, trying to hop in and skip without tangling in the rope; double dutch, a skill I never mastered, one needing to be coordinated and fleet of foot and eye; the rhymes girls chanted as we skipped that I've forgotten now, but that likely still are chanted on school playgrounds by girls in spring dresses

Small folded paper triangles, you fit your fingers inside, opening and closing them like beaks while the other child picks which square to lift, to see what is written underneath

Chalky-tasting heart-shaped candies with words printed on them: you’re sweet, be mine. They didn’t taste good but we ate them anyway because: candy!

The teacher’s smile, just for me, as I bent industriously to my work, carefully etching the word “paw”, falling in love with the word, the beginning of my love affair with putting words on paper

The morning I gave a note to my mother that said: I am going to run away, and how she sent me one back that said, wait and I’ll go with you and how it made me laugh

Being called Sheryl the Barrel, which I hated

Squishy, soggy, unappetizing sandwiches, and envying the kids who had better lunches, with packaged snacks

The smell of white paste; the smell of the classroom: paper, stale air, orange peels, the window open but never a waft of air large enough to freshen what we were breathing - school classrooms still smell like this

Inkwells, what a recipe for disaster; pens with sharp metal nibs, how we had to practice cursive by doing entire rows of O’s across the page, and how my pen nib caught, making holes in the paper, and the shaming ink blotches that were not fixed when I used the soft blotter; how my penmanship has always been awful, while some of the girls did beautiful writing, round and sweet. Do kids learn cursive any more?

Social disasters, me awkward and freckled and shy, a perfect target for the laughing nasty kids who got a kick out of making other kids blush, or cry

Running home planning to play dolls with my friend; I would say to her “let’s not make our dolls fight today”. But always, she wanted the dolls to fight, and we would storm out, angry, protective mothers, deeply offended on our doll’s behalf, and not speak to each other the rest of the day. The next day, I would run home from school, and say the same thing, hopefully. Maybe this time would be better. (The story of my life.)

Day Twenty-One of Wild Writing with Laurie Wagner